


just like jared, 19

by untrustworthyglitch



Series: blind!klaus (hazy, but hopeful) [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Blindness, Braille, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, blind Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 01:16:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18377969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrustworthyglitch/pseuds/untrustworthyglitch
Summary: Klaus has been blind for almost seventeen months. He's adjusted pretty well, all things considered, but there's one thing he just hasn't gotten around to learning just yet.Or, the one where Vanya helps Klaus (and, eventually, the rest of the family) learn to read Braille.





	just like jared, 19

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i am not blind. i have moderate-to-severe vision loss that can almost be corrected with prescription lenses, so i can almost see just as well as a sighted person would, but i definitely don't experience anywhere near the level of blindness that klaus is experiencing in this fic. as such, i could have accidentally written something offensive (though i try my best to avoid it! everyone makes mistakes) so if you notice anything off-kilter, please point it out to me immediately so that i can fix it as soon as possible.
> 
> this was born out of me thinking about klaus making vine references (which, let's be real, will probably become it's own fic pretty soon) and i just couldn't stop thinking about "whaddup, i'm jared, i'm 19, and i never fucking learned how to read."
> 
> please come down to genderqueermoth.tumblr.com to say hi!! my passions include blind klaus and also good omens. i'm very friendly!

“Hey Klaus?” Vanya asks one morning, about three weeks after the world doesn’t end. Klaus is perched on the couch next to Ben, squinting at the TV as Ben gives him a whispered rundown of what, exactly, is happening on screen. It’s a system they’ve perfected since Klaus’s injury, and while it isn’t perfect, it gets the job done. Klaus refuses to let being blind get in the way of binge-watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

“Hey Vanya?” Klaus says back. He doesn’t bother turning to look at her. It won’t do him a lot of good, after all, and Ben can fill him in on anything he misses. 

“What’re you doing?” she asks. He can hear her taking a tentative step forward, so he scoots over and slaps the seat next to himself to try and coax her into sitting down with him. They’ve all been making an effort to be inclusive, and he can tell it’s working when Vanya creeps into the room and perches on the couch, grabbing a throw pillow to hold.

“Watching TV,” he says. “Can you believe the shit Kim K gets up to? I bet Dad and Kris Jenner would have gotten along.”

Vanya laughs at that. It’s a tiny laugh and he can almost picture her little half-smile that would go along with it. It had been a rare sight, even when they were little, but he hopes it happens more often now. 

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I bet.”

They watch in silence for a while. Well, Vanya watches in silence. Klaus stares blankly at the fuzzily moving colors on the screen and listens to Ben giving a rundown of what, exactly, Kourtney is planning on wearing to the big charity event Kris has decided that they’re going to attend. It’s sure to be drama-ridden, especially if she plans on wearing the black dress that is just oh-so-similar to what Kylie has picked out. 

“Are those my heels?” Kourtney screeches.

“They’re her heels,” Ben confirms. “And they’re ugly.”

“Why would she steal her sister’s ugly heels?” Klaus wonders aloud as the on-screen catfight escalates. 

“How… how do you...” Vanya trails off and sighs. “Okay, I don’t want to be insensitive, but how do you know they’re ugly?”

“Ben says so, and I believe him,” Klaus answers smoothly. There’s no such thing as an insensitive question, as far as he’s concerned. He’s been abused and homeless and drug-addled and, hell, he fought a fucking war. Sensitivity? Never heard of her.

“Does Ben have good taste in shoes?” Vanya asks. The smile is back in her voice. Klaus wonders if she’d any less pale nowadays. Or less thin. She’s less quiet, which he absolutely loves. Back before the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, she’d blended almost completely into the background of whatever room she was in, almost by her own design. She’d been drab and silent and moved like a shadow. Now, her feet make noise when she walks, soles clacking on the hardwoods, and she laughs like she isn’t afraid to make a sound. He wonders if it has anything to do with her newfound abilities. Maybe she’s making sound more freely because she’s finally experiencing the fullness of it.

“Oh god no,” Klaus says, at the same time as Ben says, “Yes.”

“You can borrow my shoes if I can borrow your new Gucci handbag,” Kourtney says smugly.

“The Kardashians need to get so many self-help books,” Klaus says.

Vanya huffs another laugh. “Bold of you to assume they can read.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not being able to read!” Klaus shouts in mock offense. “I myself am proudly illiterate! What do I need with reading?”

He expects her to laugh. Ben is laughing. Klaus himself is laughing. Vanya is silent.

“Vanya?” he says, after the pause stretches on for too long.

“Klaus, can you… can you really not read?” she says. Her voice is tiny. All of a sudden she’s back to the withdrawn Vanya, whose voice has all the substance of a cloud of smoke, and Klaus’s heart almost breaks in half because no,  _ dammit _ , she’s not supposed to vanish again like this. 

“I mean, no, I’m blind as fuck. Kinda need to see to read.” He tries forcing brightness back into his voice, and before, it would have worked. Three weeks ago, his entire family would have taken Klaus’s good attitude at face value and just rolled with whatever he said, but now, they’re not so trusting. Ben says it’s because he faked being sighted for so long. 

“You never learned Braille?” 

That throws him for a loop. “No? I didn’t exactly have, you know, access to very many books. Not on the streets, not in rehab, and it’s not like Dad kept any Braille books around the house for just in case someone went blind. I wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“Do you want to learn?” Vanya asks. She sounds hopeful. She sounds like a girl who desperately wants to hang out with her older brother. She sounds like Vanya, but happier, and brighter.

“Sure,” Klaus says, almost without realizing it, and almost regrets it. Learning to read all over again is going to suck, especially considering Klaus wasn’t very good at it in the first place. He doesn’t even like books. Books don’t hold his attention, and every time he’s tried reading one he’s accidentally dropped it in the tub, or burned it with the end of his cigarette, or just plain lost it. He doesn’t like to read.

But then Ben softly says, “She’s grinning,” and Klaus feels the determination set in.

He’s going to learn to read, if it’s the last thing he does.  
  


 

“This sucks,” Klaus complains. They’re sitting at the dining room table, he and Vanya, clustered around a stack of books that, according to Ben, could come toppling down at any moment. The trip to the public library had been boring as all hell, and now they’re sitting together doing literal  _ homework _ .

“Reading is an essential part of life,” Vanya says. She sounds like a schoolteacher. Or at least, she sounds like what Klaus imagines a schoolteacher to sound like. He hadn’t actually, ya know, gone to school.

“I haven’t read a single word in, like, sixteen months. I can’t even really read my hand tattoos, unless I get them like an inch from my face. It’s useless.” He rubs a hand over one of the Braille children’s books they’d gathered. It just feels like tiny dots. It doesn’t  _ mean _ anything. 

“You just have to stick with it!” Vanya says. “Listen, all the letters are in a cell with six possible dots. The first ten letters of the alphabet are all unique, but after that you just have to add an extra dot to the next ten to make those letters. The trick is to feel for the dots, but we’ll get it. I have faith in us.”

Klaus sighs and runs a hand over his face. “Kinda shitty that all the things telling me how to read Braille are either written in Braille, which I can’t read, or regular English, which I also can’t read.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Vanya says.

“And me,” Ben tacks on. 

So they spend two hours sat at the table, Klaus running his hands over thick pages, Vanya and Ben helping him figure out what exactly he’s feeling. It’s frustrating and he has to take regular breaks to focus on other things, but by the end of the two hours, Klaus has a stiff back, sore fingers, and the ability to slowly, painstakingly, pick out a few very short words.

“What does this say?” Vanya asks. She’s close enough that he can make out the white of her smile. She gently takes his hand and guides it to the page where she wants it. She sets his fingers at the beginning of a word and lets go, patting the back of his wrist once in encouragement. She’s a really excellent teacher, even though she’s also learning at the same time he is, and he’s reminded of the fact that she used to give violin lessons. He bets she was really good at it.

Klaus runs his fingers over the bumps.

“The!” he announces triumphantly, after nearly a minute of feeling. The bumps are  _ so small _ .

“Yes!” Vanya half-shouts. 

“Dot?” Klaus says. 

Vanya hums. “Try again. Focus on that last letter.”

It only takes Klaus a moment to figure out where he went wrong. “Oh, dog.”

“That’s it!”

After another few seconds, Klaus says “Is!” and then, a minute later, “Brown!”

“The dog is brown!” Vanya agrees. They high five, clumsily, and Klaus runs his fingers over the sentence again.  _ The dog is brown _ . He’s reading. He’s really, genuinely, reading, and god, it feels good. He doesn’t even  _ like _ to read, but it feels like he’s gaining some kind of independence. It feels like a step in a good direction, even though he doesn’t really know the destination.

“Wait a second,” Klaus says, after something dawns on him. “The dog is brown? This is a book for blind kids. How would they know what that even means?”

“This was definitely written by someone sighted,” Vanya muses. “The whole rest of the book is just describing what things look like. I just grabbed it because it had the lowest reading level, and I knew we’d need to start out as easy as we could get. And it has things printed in plain text too, so I can double check that we’re reading it right.”

“Yeah, and I guess colors and things do matter, even if you can’t see them. Like, the sky's still blue, even if I’m not looking at it,” Klaus says. “Can we order pizza?”  
  
  


It becomes a tradition. They sit at the dining room table for a few hours every Saturday and slog through as many pages of Braille children’s books as they possibly can. They both get faster and faster, though Vanya isn’t trying nearly has hard as Klaus. For her it’s a hobby. For him, it’s an adaptation to a way of life he didn’t exactly want, but is going to do his best to succeed at. 

“What’s going on?” Diego asks, during their third session. Klaus jumps; he hadn’t heard his brother approaching.

“Jesus, Diego, warn a guy!” Klaus complains. He looks up and can just barely make out the outline of Diego, clad all in black, standing in the unlit doorway. The only feature of the darkened space is the lighter patch where Diego’s face must be. 

“Sorry,” Diego says, but he definitely doesn’t sound sorry. 

“We’re learning Braille,” Vanya tells him. Diego stomps into the room, boots heavy on the polished wooden floor, and leans over her shoulder. He runs a hand down one of the blank white pages and nods. The movement is exaggerated, and Klaus’s heart feels warm at the thoughtfulness of the action. It’s not much, but it’s his brother trying to wordlessly accommodate him, and it’s nice.

“That’s letters?” he asks.

“Yep! It’s actually a Dr. Seuss book!” Klaus holds up the cover of his copy of  _ Green Eggs and Ham _ while Diego continues to examine Vanya’s. They’ve been reading the same books lately, trying to see who can get through them faster. Klaus has speed on his side, but Vanya is the better speller, and sometimes Klaus has to go back and reread things because he didn’t quite comprehend them the first time. They both win some, and they both lose some. It’s fun.

“Weird,” Diego says. He pulls out a chair and sits down heavily. “Teach me.” 

“You want to learn Braille?” Klaus sputters, incredulous. 

“Why not? It might come in handy someday,” Diego says. He snatches a book off the top of their pile and starts flipping through pages. “This is words? How does that work?”

Vanya laughs and hands him the laminated sheet with the alphabet printed on it. She doesn’t look at it anymore, and Klaus could never use it as a cheat sheet in the first place, but they keep it around anyway. 

“Every letter is made up of a combination of a possible six dots. You read it just like you would read English, except the letters are tactile. Capital letters are signalled by a dot in the bottom left hand corner of the cell, and all caps are shown by two dots. Here, take this one,” she says, and hands him the simplest kids’ book they have.

It takes Diego ten minutes and a lot of mental effort to proclaim, “The dog is brown!”  
  
  


So Diego joins them. He’s loud and just as bad at paying attention as Klaus is, but he’s also funny and he sides with Klaus on the whole pineapple-on-pizza debate, so he’s cool to have around. He’s not very good at Braille, but he’s better than Ben, who, despite having sight as his only option to attempt the reading and thus doesn't have to actually feel around for it, is absolutely abysmal. 

A week after Diego starts learning to read, Allison comes clacking through the door in her towering heels. She sits daintily in the chair next to Klaus and grabs at the laminated cheat sheet, humming in the back of her throat as she examines it.

“You’re learning Braille,” she says astutely, and then, “I want in.”

Allison is better than Diego and Ben, but not as good as Vanya, and miles behind Klaus, who can’t lean on the cheat sheet whatsoever. Klaus is genuinely getting good at Braille, far better than he ever was at reading based on sight. He thinks it’s because Braille takes leagues more concentration than sighted reading ever did. With traditional books, Klaus could zone out and let his eyes aimlessly roam the page, not taking in a single word. With Braille, he can’t really zone out, and when he does, he realizes immediately.

Allison drags Luther to the next meeting. He sits as far from Vanya as he can get, but he listens attentively to her spiel about how exactly the little raised dots on the page turn into letters, and sits quietly with his kindergartener’s book while he fumbles to discern what the bumps mean. Klaus figures it’s hard for him to actually feel anything, with his huge and calloused fingers, but he’s still better than Ben, who has for the most part given up and simply sits and enjoys the family’s company.

Five walks in halfway through Luther’s first Braille lesson, says, “Oh, Braille?” and vanishes in a cloudy blue haze. He’s back in a moment, clutching something in his hand.

“It’s a book,” Ben tells Klaus. Klaus’s eyes widen. The thing Five is holding is way too thick to be a  _ book. _

“What’s that?” Allison asks before Klaus can get to it.

“ _ Prisoner of Azkaban _ ,” Five says simply. “I learned to read Braille during the apocalypse. Not exactly much else to do, so I learned languages. Braille was easier than learning an entire new language.”

So the family sits around the dining room table and learns to read. They ask each other for help and tease each other for their mistakes. Sometimes they’re loud and boisterous and sometimes they sit in companionable silence, but they’re together, like they should have been all their lives. Klaus has to wipe a sneaky tear from his eye, shed because of the sheer warmth in his soul at the feeling of his family, actually being a  _ family. _


End file.
